Students not able to talk or use chat in your Collaborate session?
Blackboard Collaborate is an excellent tool for facilitating live online communication with and between students using voice and text.
To communicate using voice, students (and/or faculty) need to click the TALK button in the AUDIO & VIDEO module that appears in the upper left corner of the Collaborate window.
Students who do not have access to a microphone can communicate with the rest of the class through the text chat. The chat module appears in the bottom left of the Collaborate window. Just type in the space and hit ENTER on your keyboard and your text message will go out to the whole class.
If students are reporting that the TALK button is disabled or that they cannot type in the chat window, these functions may be turned off in your Collaborate session.
To enable these functions in your session, first locate the PARTICIPANTS module, which appears on the left side of your Collaborate window, between the AUDIO & VIDEO module and the CHAT module. If the arrow to the left of the PARTICIPANTS label is pointing to the right, click the label to expand the PARTICIPANTS module. You should now see your name (labeled “Moderator”), some buttons (emoticons, away, hand-raise, yes/no), then the heading MAIN ROOM, followed by the class roster.
Across from the MAIN ROOM heading, you’ll notice a number of icons (highlighted by the red box above). Each of these icons relates to a functionality that may be made available to participants (students). In order, they are Talk, Video, (text) Chat, Whiteboard, Application Sharing, and Web Tour.
To enable one of these, click on it. So, to let students in the class talk using voice, just click the first icon (a microphone).
NOTE: you can also enable (or disable) these functions on a student-by-student basis. If you point to a name in the room roster, you’ll see a list button appears to the right of their name:
Click that list button and you’ll see a full list of properties you can change for this individual user. To enable (or disable) any of the listed functions, just click the appropriate function.
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